Hot Topics:

Lowell refugees share efforts to adapt, retain culture

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
05/17/2013 01:45:21 PM EDT

LOWELL -- While the city's immigrant and refugee dynamics are changing, community support and education remain the keys for welcoming new populations, said speakers at the Voices from Home panel Friday morning.

Intended to give refugees a platform to share their experiences, it's the 10th annual conference hosted by Lowell Public Schools, Middlesex Community College, the International Institute of Lowell, the Lowell YWCA and the state Department of Children and Families.

After a first wave of Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian refugees in the 1970s and 1980s, other Southeast Asian immigrants followed in later years, seeking out a pre-existing community and its resources, said UMass Lowell professor Phitasamy Uy.

She said today's refugees, in Lowell and across America, are most commonly from Bhutan, Burma and Iraq. Uy cited numbers showing 15,070 Bhutanese refugees arriving in the U.S. last year, with 14,160 from Burma and 12,163 from Iraq.

According to Phala Chea, the Lowell school department's coordinator of English language education programs, the city has also recently welcomed refugees from Congo and Eritrea.

These refugees face many of the same challenges as those who arrived decades earlier, said speakers in the conference's refugee parent panel.

Cambodian refugee Ang Pheng, three days away from the 27th anniversary of his arrival in America, and Alphonsine Nadode, who came over more recently from Congo, both said it was important to maintain their cultures' positive elements while striving to adapt to American life.

Advertisement

Pheng said that his family had found spending time together, especially at meals, a good way to connect, sharing history and experiences between generations raised in different countries.

"Under the same roof? Eat together," he said. "Not one bowl at the sofa, one bowl at the stairs, one bowl at the kitchen table. Together. That makes a bond."

Welcome to your discussion forum: Sign in with a Disqus account or your social networking account for your comment to be posted immediately, provided it meets the guidelines. (READ HOW.)
Comments made here are the sole responsibility of the person posting them; these comments do not reflect the opinion of The Sun. So keep it civil.